cgrizz.eth

Totally agree - very well said

Crypto is moving mainstream. This milestone is more than a headline. It’s proof of years of building, believing, and pushing the industry forward. To every Gemini user and employee who made this possible, thank you. 🧡

@Gemini 👋 🫡

ENS thread! Replying to every account with a .ETH 🫡

Cambridge has just released their updated report on Bitcoin mining For the first time, their report shows that most (52.4%) of the Bitcoin network is now powered by zero emission energy sources (up from 37% in their last report) Here's a summary of their findings👇

Cambridge University's new Bitcoin mining report also formally recognizes the ability of Bitcoin mining companies to 1. both to help stabilize power grids and 2. reduce renewable curtailment: (Something the Bitcoin mining industry has been saying for years). "Leveraging VRE oversupply... Miners can collocate to underutilised renewable energy infrastructure, such as solar or wind farms. Deeper integration with grid operators enables miners to participate in DSR initiatives, adjusting their energy consumption to balance supply and demand and earning compensation for providing these ancillary services. This adaptability not only optimises energy usage and stabilises power grids, but also strengthens the bottom line of mining firms, reinforcing their role in improving efficiency within the energy system." Full report: jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/upl…

Excited to have you on board, @danchen13 !

On Monday, the SEC informed our litigation counsel @JackBaughman27 that it has closed its investigation into @Gemini and will not be pursuing an enforcement action against us. This comes 699 days after the start of their investigation and 277 days after they sent us a Wells Notice. While this marks another milestone to the end of the war on crypto, which already includes the SEC’s withdrawal of the Coinbase lawsuit and the closing of investigations into OpenSea, Robinhood, and UniSwap, it does little to make up for the damage this agency has done to us, our industry, and America. The SEC cost us tens of millions of dollars in legal bills alone and hundreds of millions in lost productivity, creativity, and innovation. Of course Gemini is not alone. The SEC’s behavior in aggregate towards other crypto companies and projects cost orders of magnitude more and caused unquantifiable loss in economic growth for America. How many engineers left crypto or avoided it altogether because of these regulatory attacks? How many projects were never started or got off the ground because founders and engineers decided they would rather build a startup in their dorm room than inside the boardroom of a law firm trying to navigate the Kafkaesque crypto regulatory hellscape? How many engineers chose to go into other industries instead of building a permissionless, open financial system? How many years of innovation were kicked down the road at the expense of Americans? We will never know. So where do we go from here? It’s wholly unacceptable for an agency like the SEC to bully, harass, and attack a lawful industry and then decide one day to simply say we’re good and walk away. Unless there is a cost and price to be paid for this behavior, it will happen again. Thoughtful legislation will form a shield of protection, but we also need strong deterrence inside the agencies themselves. Here are a few ideas: Reimbursement If an agency refuses to write rules before it opens an investigation or brings an enforcement action, the agency should have to reimburse you for 3x your legal costs. This would make you financially whole for the time and money you spent defending yourself against sham investigations and baseless enforcement actions that were only able to be brought because the agency didn’t write rules in the first place. Even better, they should be required to advance you your legal costs so you don’t have to come out of pocket while you defend yourself. Dishonorable Discharge Everyone involved in these actions should be fired immediately and in a public way. Their names, roles, and the actions they participated in should be posted on the SEC website. How many SEC enforcement lawyers have resigned in protest since the SEC top brass instructed them to withdraw crypto cases and close investigations? Zero. Which means they never believed in these cases to begin with. Which begs the question, why didn’t these lawyers resign at the outset when they were told to bring these unjust cases? It should not be acceptable to bring the full might of the US government to bear against fledgling companies in a nascent industry and then hide behind a faceless agency or say you were “just doing your job” or “following orders.” These individuals had a choice. They could have asked to be reassigned or resigned. Nobody was forcing them to work at the SEC. Nonetheless, they chose to violate their oath and the agency’s mission to “make a positive impact on the U.S. economy, our capital markets, and people’s lives” and instead aided and abetted an unlawful war against a lawful industry. Imagine if even one SEC enforcement lawyer had resigned in protest and stood up for our industry — what a heroic act this would have been. But it never happened. Agency Ban Just like the SEC bars individuals from trading securities if they break the law, there should be a process that bars those like Gary Gensler who weaponize the law, as well those who participate in the weaponization, from ever being appointed to or hired by an agency again. Lifetime ban in this case. Going Forward We will not rebuild trust and integrity in federal agencies unless there are serious consequences for bad faith actors. Operation Chokepoint didn’t stop at 1.0. It continued to 2.0 because not enough was done to hold bureaucrats accountable for their actions during 1.0. And there will be a 3.0 unless there is a real, public reckoning for 2.0. I’m glad to be turning the page here as an industry, but this is not the end, rather the beginning towards ensuring this never happens again to the crypto industry or any other exciting, new frontier industry in the future. Here’s to continuing to reform our government and fighting the good fight. Amazing awaits

Heading to NYC next week! Drop me a note if you want to meet up

The scientific consensus, 10 or the last 11 Peer reviewed academic publications on Bitcoin & Energy show Bitcoin has strong environmental benefits. Here they are. 1. How Bitcoin Can Support Renewable Energy Development and Climate Action (Cornell University) source: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac… Key Findings: Bitcoin mining helps renewable developers generate more profits that is typically re-invested, accelerating the renewable transition 2. Bitcoin’s Carbon Footprint Revisited: Proof of Work Mining for Renewable Energy Expansion source: mdpi.com/2078-1547/14/3… Key Findings: [our research finding support] "a possible role for Bitcoin mining in promoting grid decarbonization" through effective demand response 3. Promoting rigor in blockchain energy and environmental footprint research: A systematic literature review source: sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Key Findings: Reveals fundamental flaws in the work of Alex de Vries/Digiconomist (heavily quoted by mainstream media) 4. Bitcoin and Its Energy, Environmental, and Social Impacts source: lnkd.in/gKjMcMJe Key Findings: "There is "transformative potential in the Bitcoin mining sector, especially regarding demand response, grid flexibility, and methane mitigation" 5. Drivers of Bitcoin Energy Use and Emissions Hass McCook (Oxford, Conference Paper) source: mdpi.com/2078-1547/14/4… Key Findings: With greater machine efficiency & more sustainable energy sources, Bitcoin mining's emissions has likely already peaked and is now trending downwards 6. Pairing crypto mining with green hydrogen offers clean energy boost source: sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/… Key Finding: Bitcoin mining with green hydrogen makes wind farms 73% more profitable 7. Can bitcoin mining increase renewable capacity? source: sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Key Findings: Bitcoin mining * can increase renewable energy penetration * increases emissions, but combined with demand response adds net zero additional emissions * obviates need for gas peaker plants "When Bitcoin miners provide ... demand response, their emissions impact is largely mitigated." 8. Cryptocurrency mining as a novel virtual energy storage system in islanded and grid-connected microgrids source: sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Key Findings: Microgrids (MGs) which are not using Bitcoin Mining waste significant amounts of renewable energy. However using Bitcoin mining * stops almost all renewable energy waste * reduces MG costs by 46% * accelerates MG development * decarbonizes power production 9. High resolution modeling and analysis of cryptocurrency mining’s impact on power grids: Carbon footprint, reliability, and electricity price source: sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Key findings: 1. Mining loads participation in demand response mitigates market disruptions. 2. Mining loads’ flexibility increases grid reliability and stability 10. An integrated landfill gas-to-energy and Bitcoin mining framework source: sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Key Findings: Bitcoin mining can profitably reduce landfill methane, where other technologies cannot In summary: 10 out of the last 11 papers on Bitcoin mining show clear environmental benefits. If you want to keep maintaining that Bitcoin is bad for the environment despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you should know that the scientific consensus does not support your position.

1/10 10 images that forever changed our perceptions about Bitcoin and energy 1. Rhodes et al showed that flexible datacenters like Bitcoin mining allow grid owners to stack more intermittent renewable energy sources onto the grid Source: lancium.com/wp-content/upl… 🧵

Wow, what a throwback. Did you wake up this morning and think it was 2021? Bill, in case you didn't notice, the media has largely stopped reporting on this misinformation source: x.com/DSBatten/statu… Why? Largely because 10 of the last 11 peer review journals show Bitcoin has positive environmental externalities, which is in agreement with what grid operators, battery engineers, solar and wind generators, and methane mitigation specialists have also observed. source: x.com/DSBatten/statu… In the meantime, Bitcoin now uses 56.72% sustainable energy. source: woocharts.com/esg-bitcoin-mi… You can find out all you need to here, next time you feel the impulse to simultaneously embarrass yourself publicly while misinforming people. docs.google.com/document/d/1Q5…

Sigh... again with the ETH misinformation as we await a decision on ETH ETPs. Ok--let’s talk about some basic facts about Ethereum. Millions of Americans hold ETH; it has been vital to crypto since its 2015 launch; and ETH is a commodity, not a security. 1/10

Some thoughts on the Binance settlement, with the preamble that I think companies that don’t like certain laws should still comply with them while campaigning for change. One interpretation of the government’s suit and the resulting mammoth settlement is that by refusing to implement compliance schemes like AML & CFT, Binance failed to stop money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The problem with this interpretation is that vast sums of illicit flows still move through the companies who do comply. Banks, brokers and other types of (mostly non-crypto) intermediaries are the preferred route for tax and sanctions evaders, to the tune of over a trillion dollars a year. A more accurate interpretation is that Binance refused to participate in the pretense of stopping illicit finance. They didn’t kick out the occasional bad actor or file endless suspicious activity reports. In other words, they didn’t play the game, didn’t pay their annual tithe to the AML-Industrial Complex (a cushy landing spot for ex officials) and didn’t kiss the ring, as it were. You could see the Kabuki aspect of all this in the joint press conference held by various Important Government Officials yesterday. If you didn’t know the context and watched the whole thing on mute you’d think the Feds just brought down a major drug cartel or rounded up the remnants of ISIS, as opposed to finally extracting their pound of flesh from the preferred trading venue for Dogecoin. This settlement was so important that it warranted an appearance by the Secretary of the Treasury, but not important enough for her to know how to pronounce the company’s name. Also telling: most of the Tough Talk from the People in Suits was about the procedures Binance refused to follow, and notably NOT about the terrorism that Binance enabled. The same goes for the unsealed settlement docs, full of shocking (not really) revelations like the time some dude in Washington traded $1400 worth of some coin with some dude in Iran. This from the same administration that released $10b to the Iranian government a week ago. People who sincerely believe that crypto is some unique enabler of bad people doing bad things don’t understand how the rest of the financial system actually works. One of the biggest banks in America still operates a division in Russia, and many of the world’s worst tyrants use America as their piggy bank. But that’s all considered OK because someobody did the paperwork. Binance was wrong to lie to its customers and wrong for not being compliant. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad company. Spend five minutes googling “banks facilitating money laundering” and you’ll find that financial firms with household names have been caught doing far worse things involving orders of magnitude more money, yet suffered much milder consequences. If they’d been held to the Binance Standard there’d be hundreds of managing directors in jail and less money for shareholder buybacks (or lobbying). But the bankers were smart enough to never question the game. Unlike FTX—a company whose psychopathic leader was beloved by half the people in that press conference not that long ago—Binance didn’t abscond with user money. It did a reasonably decent job of onboarding tens of millions of poor, brown, and otherwise underprivileged people into the financial system, something the world’s compliant financial firms have chronically failed to do (which is OK—it’s not considered redlining when the AML department holds the pen). Binance's net contribution to a more inclusive financial system is something to be commended. What remains to be seen is if firms like that can keep serving underserved populations now that they too have agreed to play the game, and do the paperwork.

An inaccurate report last week claimed Hamas raised nearly $100 million via crypto assets. In reality, it was less than $500,000. This encapsulated the misconception that crypto is a tool for illicit finance when it accounts for less than 1% of global illicit finance activity.

Last week, WSJ published a report citing Elliptic research to claim that Hamas has raised “as much as $93 million” prior to their terror attack in Israel. This was seized upon by Sen. Warren, who cited the report in a letter criticizing crypto with over 100 congressional signers. People in crypto knew that this figure was shocking and had to have been overstated. Within days Chainalysis came out with a post explaining a basic error in the data: If a rogue exchange with $10m in volume sends $1000 to Hamas, you can’t count that as $10m to Hamas. Today, Elliptic, the sole source of the $93m, figure has unequivocally said that their research is being "misrepresented." The company also said that they have been trying to explain this to Sen. Warren’s office and the original WSJ reporters. So what now? Does the truth ever reach DC? Well, we can try. Here's Elliptic's post elliptic.co/blog/setting-t…

Give us a shout if you’re interested! 🙌

Congratulations @Gemini -the first firm registered by the Central Bank of Ireland as a Virtual Asset Service Provider. This is significant for Ireland as the Government focuses on innovation as a driver of growth. I wish Gemini every success as they build their team in Ireland.

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The below clip is from a Fall 2018 Graduate MIT course called "Blockchain and Money" Gary Gensler - the current President of the SEC, was the professor. The Hypocrisy speaks for itself 🐀 "So we already know in the US and in many other jurisdictions that 3/4 of the market are not ICOs or NOT what would be called securities, even in the US, Canada, and Taiwan, the three jurisdictions that follow something similar to the Howey Test that we've talked about. 3/4 of the market is non-securities. It's just a commodity, a cash crypto."